1138 Balcony Garden

Mike: So Dusty, you told me that you tend to grow your own kind of plants and things, and you're into kind of greenery and into kind of like ecology.

Dusty: Yeah.

Mike: You grow your own plants on your balcony, is that right?

Dusty: Right, yeah. Well, you know, I live in Tokyo, and the balcony gets a lot of sunlight. It was actually a pretty good growing season, so we grow a lot of herbs on our balcony, like basil, thyme, mint, or lemongrass. They grow quite well. Even coriander, we have growing right now.

Mike: Wow.

Dusty: It's just going well.

Mike: So you use that stuff for your own cooking and everything, right?

Dusty: Yeah. You can really see the difference, especially when you're making sauces and things. It just has a lot more flavor to it. We've also started growing some vegetables, so we've got carrots going, and we've got lettuce. We're going to start doing grapes in about a month or so.

Mike: Wow! You must have a huge balcony.

Dusty: We are lucky. We got a pretty big balcony, but it doesn't take much room. And even some things you would never expect, like goya or grapes grow well on the balcony.

Mike: Really?

Dusty: Yeah.

Mike: Wow!

Dusty: And it's like good-

Mike: I always thought goya was like a tropical kind of vegetable.

Dusty: It will do okay in Tokyo.

Mike: Really?

Dusty: Yeah. And then the grapes, you know, the grape quality isn't very good.

Mike: Okay.

Dusty: But during the summer, they have leaves, and so it kind of cools down your balcony. In then in the winter, the leaves drop away, so you still get a lot of sunlight. It's kind of a very eco-friendly way of cooling your house.

Mike: So what advice would you give to somebody if they wanted to, let's say, grow their own vegetables or herbs, or whatever, on their balcony?

Dusty: Well for one thing, don't be scared to stack things.

Mike: Okay.

Dusty: Yeah. If you don't have much room, it's okay to kind of build a little shelf above one. Herbs don't need a ton of sunlight.

Mike: Oh, really? Okay. Wow, I didn't know that.

Dusty: So you'll be fine with that. And then also, grow things you're actually going to use. Like last year, we grew jalapeno peppers, and we grew habaneros.

Mike: Wow!

Dusty: Yeah. Habaneros are great. We've got tons of them, but we just couldn't eat them. It was so spicy.

Mike: Oh, really?

Dusty: Yeah. In the end, we eventually deep fried some of them and had like cheese poppers.

Mike: You mean, you eat them like deep-fried, all straight habanero peppers?

Dusty: Deep fried with cheese inside. But yeah, that was about the only way we could do it. And even just handling them, like your eyes would hurt afterwards.

The other thing is be ready for bugs. Even if you're up like eight storeys or nine storeys, you'll be amazed how many - you'll wake up one morning and just find your plants covered in caterpillars.

Mike: Really?

Dusty: Yeah.

Mike: Wow! I guess so. I mean, in fact, that makes sense. Insects fly, so they would eventually get themselves up there.